Using external 500gb drive on fat32

Computer Hardware SSDs, Hard Drives and NAS
#1

so i’ve had my WD essencial mybook 500gb drive for a few months now. im using it mostly for media storage (movies, music, pictures,etc…) so far i havent had any issues on it. its formatted fat32, but i’ve read everywhere that when an external drive is formatted fat32 it wont/cant transfer files over 2 or 4 gb, i forgot which. but i have stuff in there thats 8 and 16gb.

my question is, will this fat32 affect my hdd in the long run? would it been a better choice to format to ntfs? oh by the way i do stream all the things in my external drive to watch on my tv.

#2

Hi,

FAT32 has the advantage to be compatible with most devices, not only with Windows (NT) PCs (Admitted, recent Linux distros can handle NTFS also). The problem: FAT32 supports only file sizes up to 4 GB.

If your HDD is only connected to a Windows (NT) PC, then you can convert the file system from FAT32 to NTFS.

Michael

#3

thanks for your reply michael, im not sure about the fat32 supports file sizes up to 4gb. when i’ve transfered files from my pc to the drive that are about 8gb and even 16gb.

also, there’s no issues with streaming on a fat32 vs ntfs is there? by the way im on xp.

#4

[quote=itsjustlenny;2215263]thanks for your reply michael, im not sure about the fat32 supports file sizes up to 4gb.[/quote]http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463

when i’ve transfered files from my pc to the drive that are about 8gb and even 16gb.
you should check the files on that disc.

also, there’s no issues with streaming on a fat32 vs ntfs is there? by the way im on xp.
The file system of a streaming server does not matter at all.

Michael

#5

NTSF formatted drives are not “Seen” by windows 9x Operating systems

It isn’t only the maximum file size but at a certain point FAT32 actually runs out of sector numbers for the file allocation table
that gives “FAT” it’s name…

other than that the advantages of NTSF are legion.

If you are a care with computer maintainance and defrag often
you’ll be pleased to discover that NTSF drives tend to defrag faster
on an NT/2k/XP system than a FAT32 drive does.

If you use disckeeper you’ll discover that you cannot use fragguard
on a fat32 drive… there is more but that’s all the justification needed to switch.

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